the_mysterious_mr_enterfandomcom-20200214-history
A retrospective of creative works (Part 4)
Let's just get this over with. Isaldor (2015) Isaldor - Terrain Map This is one thing that I made with no direction. One day I drew up a map, and I decided to flesh it out. It wasn't really originally designed to be a part of any big story or anything. It was just something that I wanted to do to let my creativity out. I came up with animals, countries, and sapient races. I don't want to go into all of the details here, because they are still on my DeviantArt page. Unlike Children of the Skies, I did post pretty much everything to the public - from the sapient tree race that communicates with people by them eating their fruit, to the wud berries that would allow you to see any memory as if you were living it that day. Eventually, I tried tailoring a story to the world of Isaldor. I came up with a young girl... again. This time she was the daughter of a powerful politician, and was being taught in the ways of magic by one of the dog people. His name was Layr. You might want to pay attention because this stuff is going to come back later. The plot was that the girl, Jira (yes, it's another name that was reused. If The Legend of Zelda can reuse town names as people, I can too), was being drafted in a war. The country they were in was getting desperate. Jira had specialized healing magic. Her mother had specialized magnetism magic. Jira almost kills herself trying to heal her brother, but is forced to just let him die (as the spell would have them both dead; Jira wasn't strong enough to heal them both). Because of the draft, Jira and Layr try to make their getaway from their country and... stuff happens, basically. At one point, Jira's father gets caught and punished for treason, so Jira's mother needs to execute them, or they'll both be executed for treason, and Jira's father drinks quicksilver so Jira can use her magnetism to tear him apart from the inside out. And there's a getaway on a train because I like trains. And at one point Jira shapeshifts into Layr so she can escape. I can tell you the details is what I'm saying. And as you'll notice, some of the details are coming back. I mean, there's no point in just leaving good ideas to meander and die in the past. Like everything that's transpired has become a part of my shared mental universe. Wud berries will always be a thing in my imagination. The Editrude tree race of people and their roots which hold a planet together will always be a part of my inner world. But it also feels like there's... a story that wants to be told, but isn't getting what it wants. My stories have gotten more and more similar. If it stars a young girl in a fantasy world, struggling against society, it's probably a Mr. Enter novel. Unfortunately the common threads aren't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something more obvious. Why do these character archetypes keep coming back? What binds all of the plots together? What themes keep popping up again over and over? Alone Together (2015): '''Alone Together - Pilot; Alone Together - Oscar Breaks a Ball (Sample Ep) Hmmm... in hindsight, I'm really not fond of this. Despite you know, everyone thinking that these are some of my best work. Why don't I like this? Well, a lot like Little Cassie, a lot put into this is very negative feelings. In the stuff that I didn't show off - the extra plots and things - there is a lot of disillusionment. The series was a deconstruction of plotlines and tropes that I absolutely could not stand, and that makes this the most obvious on-its-face explanation of why I didn't continue it. If there's an obvious answer, it would be for Alone Together. It's a shame too because this is probably the most well-received thing I've written; at least since Hellspawn. It was incepted to be an animated sitcom, in the vain of Family Guy, or The Simpsons, complete with your requisite extremely smart/genius young child. It follows a single-father named Jack... his teenage daughter Grace; his middle-school son Oscar; and the super-genius five-year-old Julie. Jack had sole custody over his three kids because Jack's ex-wife was an awful evil person that wanted nothing to do with any of the kids (until eventually she did at the final episode of the series). The problem with writing this series? It made me uncomfortable as fuck. The episode that was released "Oscar Breaks a Ball" is about your standard kick in the crotch, that's really funny... until Oscar gets a testicular torsion and it gets as bad as it possibly could to deconstruct the fuck out of that joke. And that episode "episode 5" exists because it was one of the lighter episodes. One episode would have been Grace talking to the police officer that took her mother's side (the abusive one) in a domestic dispute that ended up causing a lot of trauma. And you can't really write about deconstruction without dealing with the feelings of disgust or hatred. The family had a "perfect" standard sitcom family as neighbors. The kid there wishes that his father could stay home from work so he can see his ball games or whatever. Julie makes it so that's possible. And the neighbor ends up getting fired. But it's okay, he learns that he's good at being a stay-at-home-dad in the next episode. The subplots with the neighbor were the lighthearted parts. As were the parts with the fan favorite Julie. One episode was about her shrinking some random people, and basically literally playing God. Like actually forcing the shrunken people to start a religion around her. This episode would have come to fruition, but... I don't know, I've always been awkward when approaching the subject of religion in writing. Like, it's hard for me to write without feeling like I'm pissing someone off in a deep way. Yeah, that "I don't want to write about religion" rule doesn't just apply to GA; it applies to everything. But that goes for a lot in this series. Much of the show was going to be the world's view of Jack's parenting, and towards the finale I was going to abuse him in any way that the law would let me, giving him the worst scenario possible. One of the earlier episodes was about Oscar being hit with the "cycle of abuse" stuff in his health class, and him becoming absolutely paranoid of himself and abusing someone else because he grew up under an abusive parent. I'd describe the reason why I stopped this is because it's "too hard." Yeah, I know the phrase of "suffering for your art" but there's only so much that I could do, and whenever I get into the Little Cassie area; it just ends up becoming mush. The humor's good though. My favorite joke that never made it in: Oscar: "Julie, I need to miss a test tomorrow. Do you have something to get me sick" opens a drawer of a bunch of vials Julie: "Let's see, I've got small pox, the black plague, Spanish flu--" Oscar: "Do you have something... less lethal?" Julie": "Fine, be a baby. Here's chicken pox." '''Time Travel kids story (2016): WIP: some random time travel story Yay, we finally made it to 2016, and what kind of sparked this whole list. Two kids travel from the future to meet their father in his twenties. The problem? He's a man who has vowed to never have children for the rest of his life. This has the same problems that cropped up in both Alone Together and Young Commando. First of all, it was based on an asperger's urge - stories about time travel and the future were fascinating me at the time. When the urge left, so did my desire to continue. However, I think the bigger problem this time around was... well, it was about two people who traveled back in time to 2016. It was 2016, and early 2016 too before we'd know the direction that world events would take. Actual big platform politics and political satire, which this premise felt like it was forcing me into, are not my forte. Yeah, it's the same problem as writing religion with me. And I didn't want to be... wrong. When writing about the future, you're going to be wrong. Chances are you'll get a few things right, but you're always going to come up with those hoverboards and self-lacing shoes that never come into fruition. Now in most time travel stories, this is okay because the future was a long way away, but there was a chance that some predictions would be wrong by the time the script was finished. No pun intended, but... these two kids found themselves in the wrong time and the wrong place. It's beautifully ironic, I swear. Like usual, I would like to continue this, if only to get someone to tell Koi that he was named after a type of fish. Also, I don't know why, but LED hair lights as a common fashion thing is something that I want to catch on: www.google.com/search?q=led+ha… They're used both here and in the Growing Around novel. And yeah, this story would feature the bright and shiny type of future that seemed less and less likely to exist as time went on. Parable of the Dragon and the Shepherd (May 11th, 2016): The Parable of the Shepherd and the Dragon So I wrote a traditional parable/fable, in the style of Aesop's fable. In it, there's a shepherd. He's got a job - to keep the town's sheep safe from the wolves. However, the people only want to help with the fence keeping the sheep safe when it looks bad and run-down and there's a serious problem imminent, but it constantly needs maintenance. So, the shepherd makes bigger and bigger lies to the point where he's making up fantasy - that a dragon will eat the sheep if they don't give an insane amount of money. The people eventually get paranoid and go hunting for the dragon, which does not exist. I'm surprised how many people didn't get the message, but here's what it's about - the nature of charity. What many people don't seem to realize is that charities are businesses. The unethical tactics that business are criticized for using? Well yeah, charities do that too. They do that a lot. I mean, how many people have been moved to tears by an animal shelter commercial playing "In the Arms of the Angels." It's just manipulative advertising. The same thing as spending hours photo shopping a burger to look better, except the former commercial goes further to tug at your heart-strings. Charities usually end up making bigger and bigger well... lies to keep things going. While the problem still exists, they make it seem bigger and bigger in people's eyes to get more and more funds, like the shepherd has done. Because that's what works. The fence will fall into disrepair when the charities aren't doing this. And yes, it eventually leads to some charities causing damage, like blurring statics and confusing data, in the same way the shepherd beat one of his sheep to death in order to make the threat seem bigger. And yes, most people only give into charity when there's an imminent threat. After an earthquake, people are quick to donate, but six months later, people are less inclined when they're not hearing about every day on the news, even though that country stills need the help. I like this one, but there's not much to say. It was complete, but that's probably because it was so short. Growing Around: Party Panic (October 31st) 'www.amazon.com/Growing-Around-… Well... I wrote a book. I just want to say that again because that's something that you say as much as possible if you're able to. The question is... how. ''Growing Around in its entirety has been the biggest enigma. The more details I know about the world and characters, the more interested I am in conveying them, in contrary to Children of the Skies. While people are definitely interested in this, it's not my most popular project and it never has been. There have been times when it felt like no one wanted to hear about it, but my own interest has never waned. And I wrote the book through great physical pain, and Norm of the North. The first reaction is to say that it's because a lot of the chapters were already jotted down - it started out based on scripts, but actually no. While the first draft was pretty much a direct transcription of some of the Growing Around scripts in prose form; the final draft contains very little of that. It has its own plot. Sally Dunn gets a jury duty parody letter for "Party Duty" where she must prepare for a party for the entire town, while helping her mother get good grades in a world run by kids. At least there's documentation about this one. A lot of it. In my Bounty Hamster review, I say that I wrote 20,000 words in like 2 weeks (of the first draft), and yeah... after a bit of a dull period early on, this thing kept me constantly excited to the point where I was writing 3,000 words a day. God, I don't think that I felt that kind of invigoration since Metamorphosis. And I don't see why. What does this story have that say... Children of the Skies didn't? What makes Growing Around so different from Eden of the Stars? Keep in mind, I told the public I was writing both of those. Honestly, my biggest success gives me more questions than answers, and that... confuses me. '''Cyana (2017) Cyana - Pilot Cyana is a lot of things that I've already done, reiterated on, and if you've followed this retrospective and you've read Cyana, ''you already know that. Let's start with ''Cyana is about a young girl with a special gift dealing with the adversity of a hostile society. Even down to the names: Ketmar was the starting town in Epic, and most of the other names, with the exceptions of Omnar and Cyana herself were taken directly from Isaldor. Unlike Jira, Cyana has lightning powers... and wants to get to the city of Jira. Both of them have a mentor named Layr though, who is a powerful mage in both instances. However, in this version, Layr has water powers. Cyana even teams up with a young genius boy on a cross-country mission, while people conspire to stop her. On top of this, there's the disillusionment from realizing that a parent isn't who you thought they were (Claire in Alone Together and Telos in Cyana); and the dead mother is going to come back in Fairytale Brooke. Also, a powerful young girl struggling to contain her inner nature. Well, that sounds a lot like Metamorphosis. To be fair, Cyana isn't totally a culmination of everything to this point. Part of this was just for me to have epic elemental battles in my head, and seeing just how creative I could be with nature itself. You think electricity beats water? Well, it might... unless that water mage launches water at the electricity caster, catching the bolt and basically redirecting it. Malfer uses light to turn invisible and create illusions. And honestly, if nothing was really published or finished, there was no problem to... scavenge what was left behind. I wouldn't reuse Summerway, because that's in a finished product and it's something complete. However, wud berries are fair game. If I wanted, Cyana could get addicted to them, trying to relive her happy days when she still had a false impression of her father, over and over again. Anyway, it makes this easier, trying to figure out what I've done and what ideas fascinate me. The fragility of the human mind seems to keep coming back. Cyana, all four episodes, was written with no direction. I wrote from the seat of my pants. And we've got... well, the good and the bad of that. for one, I got four episodes in. However, a lot of the details, especially the early details are undefined or flat out contradictory. Omnar trainng Cyana doesn't make much sense. We don't spend enough time in Ketmar to really establish it, and the plotline has some pacing problem. Also, for something that was eventually going to be a novel, it really follows action animation beat. This many action/fight scenes would be tiring in a book; ending each chapter with a new one. In animation, like Samurai Jack or Avatar, yeah... that's pretty much what you do - Act 1 is establishing the concept and Act 2 is using it in an action sequence. And it eventually succumbed to the "I don't know where this is going" syndrome, beyond a vague idea. Cyana ended up being pissed at Layr, and I couldn't get the characters to go in the direction they needed to because of that. The fifth episode ran into some casters, who were basically teaching their children to be hateful and paranoid of non-caster people because of the tragedy that they had suffered. While Zanjero, the non-caster person was walking with them. Yeah, this series did/was going to deal with a lot of the dynamics of prejudice. This is something that keeps squeaking up, but it always seems to turn what I'm writing into a "no! no! no! no" kind of deal. I want to write about it, but at the same time I don't want to write about it. Unfortunately it's endemic to what Cyana is. Cyana is a story about prejudice. And not really a specific type of prejudice either. For example, while the casters and non-casters are separated by physical appearance, casters keep getting stereotyped as destructive forces of nature that will hurt and kill you if they can get away with it, while non-casters are stereotyped as useless and weak. There's actually a reason for the caster to be a female, and the non-caster to be a male, to really deconstruct and examine the stereotypes. The story is about a cycle. Long ago in ancient days, the non-casters found themselves very outclassed with the casters' supernatural abilities. They ended up basically taking control and subjugating the non-casters, as useless and redundant. Then the humans came up with machines, which had power over nature like the casters. Slowly it was the casters that found themselves perceived as useless, and more trouble than they were worth. And the story of Cyana begins at the beginning of the next reversal, and the next turning. And that revolves around Cyana herself. She has lightning powers, and seems to be much more powerful than your average caster. Rebellions and uprising want her, or just her abilities. In episode 3, both the casters and non-casters dehumanize Cyana. She's seen as a destructive monster by the non-casters and a tool by the casters. The dynamics are hard to talk about because we do get close to Alone Together territory. Honestly, I'm starting to think that one of my bigger problems, hindering my writing ability is bashfulness. I'll talk about that in the final part though. Cyana was built on complexity and nuance. You know the Metamorphosis "I will not be a monster" theme that was going on? Well yeah, that's a major aspect of Cyana's character. Casters continually generate energy that must be released, which was meant to create an equilibrium with the non-casters. Non-casters would take consume energy from the world, but god-creatures like the Thunderbird, put casters on the planet to return that energy to the world. Unfortunately, they weren't the best tools for the job, as releasing too much energy would kill the caster and not releasing any would make the caster explode and kill them... and everyone around them. In episode 3, Cyana is basically turned into a living bomb. My favorite non-written moment from this series is Zanjero building his plane (heh heh... I'm a reiterative piece of shit, aren't I?), and inviting Cyana to fly. All casters have a natural hatred of technology - after all, that was what "destroyed their throne" in the first place. And Cyana gets over her technophobia for Zanjero and... she's allowed to be as happy as you'd imagine a spirit of lightning being in the clouds for the first time would be. Swan Song (2017) story Okay, here's what Swan Song is about - I've done nothing with my life and I haven't been able to finish anything I started, and it's a vague depressing story about easing the regrets as a long-winded way around me easing my own regrets. Any ideas for this were vague and nebulous to the point where I didn't even have an idea what time period it was supposed to take place in. I guess it was eventually decided as modern, because one of the regrets you were supposed to ease was a celebrity who was thinking about retiring, but was an inspiration to many people. I have no idea how the story was supposed to go or what the fuck I was doing. It's the clearest example of me thinking of an emotion and going with that, rather than a character, a plot, or even a theme really. There's potential here, but it needs to be thought through first. I don't have much to say but... Life bad ending unlocked, your tomb stone says "My Beloved Mona, I'm sorry. Perhaps we can go beyond the shores of next life like we were meant to." Finishing the Swan Song isn't so much a game objective, but a life objective at this point in the... well game. I feel like I'm gonna be grandpa someday soon. 'Fairytale Brooke (2017): '''Fairytale Brooke Chapter 1 (expanded) And we've made it. The next story that's meandering in chapter 2 (why is it always chapter 2)? Once again, I could tell you how the story goes. It's about a young girl (heh he... I'm a reiterative piece of shit, aren't I?) who slowly finds her life becoming more and more fantastical. The rules of logic and reality seem to be rewriting themselves in front of her eyes... and she's the only one who seems to notice. Not only does chalk randomly turn into worms when a kid gets an answer on the board wrong, but apparently they've always done that. The main story is about this girl, basically going through a fantasyland in an attempt to... well, get out of it. This one definitely takes some of its inspiration from ''Alice in Wonderland. Basically, this is a story about growing up... in a weird way. The main plot is that for Brooke to get back to reality she needs to collect three maguffins for plot. One of them takes her into the fantasyland's infestation of her attic. Her old childhood toys have come to life and have grown in size. They've formed a bit of their own community, and they're rather pissed at Brooke for abandoning them, and put her on trial. Hey, there are some new ideas this time around though. Brooke's father always used exaggeratory language, saying things like "if you don't mow the lawn, it'll become a jungle." Well, guess what? A lawn became a jungle, and Brooke ends up being the leader of an army of giant ants going after a spoiled brat that Brooke used to babysit, who has suddenly become the ruler of a country. Like I said, it's inspired by Alice in Wonderland, also Little Nemo, and as you might have guessed - fairytales. Right now, I'm on chapter two, and... it's a struggle, but this one isn't lost yet. But... I'm really feeling battle fatigue. Next time, in our final installment, we'll be exploring the ultimate point and seeing if we can find any answers to my creative rut. Category:Miscellaneous